Bungie's Destiny 2 Reveal: The Liveblog

If you can't follow along with the stream but still want to find out what exactly Bungie did to the Tower, our liveblog has you covered.

8:30 PM: So, after three tumultuous years of Destiny 1, Bungie is finally going to push out the sequel. We already know some of the broad strokes: Earth is #rekt thanks to the Red Legion, resulting in Cayde wandering off shooting things in a drunken stupor somewhere.

Speaking of which, if you want to follow along with the livestream in a second tab you can do so via the page below:

It won't officially kick off until the early hours of tomorrow morning, but if you're keen to see what Bungie has in store for Destiny 2 - as well as what Destiny might look like on PC - then you can watch here.

The MMO shooter will be coming to PC for the first time - it's been a while since Bungie released anything on PC. Bungie doesn't have to cater to the 360 or PS3 this time around either, and we might get a sense of what Destiny 2 looks like at 4K. (Anything for Project Scorpio probably wouldn't be shown until E3, but you never know.)

I'm keen to see what cross-platform features are in the game this time around, and what the plan is with the story. Please, no grimoire cards. Please.

For those setting an alarm, I'll be back around 2:30 AM Sydney time with a coffee (or several) and maybe a biscuit. As for the livestream itself, here's when you can tune in for various local timezones:

Another important bit to note: you can't keep progress from the first game, but you can import your Destiny 1 characters. Veterans will probably get some sort of badge, banner or other cosmetic bonus as well for carrying their character over. Your loot won't carry over, either.

Until then, I'll see you soon!

Image: Kotaku

2:30 AM: And we're back.

So the Destiny 2 livestream is being a bit of a tease. Bungie has hired out an entire aircraft hanger for this event. Good God. They did confirm gameplay is front and centre, mind you, although you already knew that already. Otherwise, why would you be up at this ungodly hour of the morning?

Grab a coffee, grab a piece of toast. Let's get ready.

2:45 AM: Almost 200,000 concurrents on the livestream. Pretty decent numbers for a "gameplay reveal".

Anyway, the rumour mill has been in extreme overdrive lately. The craziest thing I've seen: word that Destiny 2 on PC will go through the Blizzard client, not Steam or multiple channels.

The voice actor behind Zavala, Lance Reddick, is now giving a short interview, saying Zavala is the most Shakesperian role he's ever played beside Shakespeare:

Curiously, Reddick mentioned making a joke about how Zavala was like Sombra - from Overwatch. In-jokes much?

2:50 AM: Here's a nice background to tide you all over:

Balance is obviously going to be a huge element. Bungie have the benefit of working under Activision, and I can't help but wonder whether they've looked at what Blizzard did with Overwatch by balancing PC separately from consoles. It would be interesting inside baseball to see whether the studio is actually setup to push out simultaneous patches for console and PC (something Blizzard took a while to nail down), but that's probably not something that will get advertised a great deal on the stream.

Five minutes now.

2:55 AM: I reached out on Facebook to ask people what they were most looking forward to, and some of the most common replies include: a looking for group function, a fully open world rather than having to go in and out of orbit, a built in story, and a decently optimised PC version.

What are you keen for? The music behind the stream, incidentally, is pretty damn good. Also, nice to see people complying with orders at the event:

Image: NeoGAF

3:00 AM: Here we go.

3:02: AM So the Tower is rebuilding, of sorts:

Game director Luke Smith takes the stage now. "Destiny 2 is going to be a new start for everyone," he quips.

3:04 AM: The game's vision has three pillars, apparently. Smith mentions the sandbox has been rebuilt for smaller team formats, and that Crucible has been retooled from the beginning.

One of the pillars is that you will always have someone to play with; 50% of people never played a raid. Looks like Trials, Nightfalls and raids will be available to all players somehow (and it sounds like there will be some sort of LFG mechanic built into the game).

3:07 AM: Time for some new footage - Homecoming.

Looks like the beginnings of war:

Here's the first cinematic trailer:

And the first look at the UI:

3:12 AM: Looks like you have three active abilities now, on top of your super. Legendaries are back, and the character being shown off so far is a Warlock.

Here's a new character we'll see more of, I'm sure. (Turns out it's just the old shipwright, boo.)

Very smooth transition from the cut-scene to mission gameplay. And grenade launchers are a thing now. Flaming swords don't look too shabby either:

3:18 AM: That's just from the opening sequence, which doesn't end well for the Guardians obviously. Luke Smith returns, saying the Red Legion are basically rebelling because they believe the Traveller should have picked them instead of the Guardians.

3:22 AM: So the main pillar is that the light has been taken away, and Destiny 2 is about regaining your powers and your city. "It's a fresh start for all players," one of the developers say. Another says there are more cinematics and story missions, all things you'd expect for a sequel.

The weapons have been redesigned now: there's a kinetic weapon, energy weapon and a power weapon. The supers are new as well: Dawnblade, Sentinel and Arcstrider. The latter looks sick, and is reminiscent of what Hunters had in Destiny 1.

3:27 AM: Back to presentation mode. Let's talk campaign. People at the live event will get to play a new strike and part of the campaign.

As for the Crucible, it's now 4v4 across all game modes. The new HUD has information about opponents including if their supers are ready. Interesting.

One of the brand new modes: Countdown. It's an attack-defend mode, apparently. Odds are people will capture a randomly spawning point on the map and then have to defend it, Call of Duty Headquarters style. But we'll see about that later.

3:31 AM: Good update: you can launch all of the activities from the in-game world without going to orbit. Hooray. There's a new map as well:

3:37 AM: And there's the first major stream glitch for me. But it's back, and with M.E. Chung, Destiny 2's social lead.

Official clan support is being patched into the game, complete with in-game rosters, custom banners, tools for building fireteams. Clans will have a reward system with everyone's contribution across raids and PvP feeding back into rewards for the overall clan.

Apparently clans will matter to players even if you're a solo player. Chung explains that raids were kept exclusive to dedicated groups of people. "We have so many players who are looking to playing challenging content in this welcoming environment," she adds, introducing a guided games feature.

It's supposedly a place for solo players to pair with clans they want to play with, one game at a time:

Image: Kotaku

3:44 AM: In case you wanted to see it, here's what the orbit screen looks like:

Image: Kotaku

3:47 AM: And Mark Noseworthy, project lead on Destiny 2, is giving his presentation. He's talking about how he's reconnected with old friends and relatives through Destiny, something a lot of gamers can connect with.

The concept art behind him, however, looks amazing:

3:53 AM: Here's the first gameplay mission.

It's time for Activision to close out the show. He makes a quip about Bungie "killing themselves" working on Destiny 2, which isn't really the kind of joke I'd make given how many developers crunch, but whatever.

But, it's time for info about the beta. No word on a date though:

3:56 AM: Finally, info about Destiny 2 on PC. It's playable on the event floor, but the confirmation now is what platform it'll be distributed through: Battle.net.

Yup, that's Mike Morhaime crashing a Destiny 2 event. Destiny 2 will be available through the same client as Overwatch and StarCraft 2, meaning you'll be able to carry your friends list over from Blizzard games right into Destiny 2.

4:00 AM: And that's it for this evening's proceedings. One last thing before we go: a shot of some exotic armour.

If you'd like to rewatch the presentation later, you can do so here. Otherwise, that's all she wrote (for now).

What'd you think? I would have liked to see any info revealed about cross-platform support, subclasses (are they keeping what was introduced in The Taken King and Rise of Iron?), what's being done with the PC version of the game and how character importing might work, but there's always E3 for that.

4:14 AM: Extra bonus - NVIDIA has just released some 4K screenshots of the game, captured on PC. One of the PNG files is (no kidding) 100mb, but here's a compressed version:

Image: Bungie/NVIDIA

God I wish I had NBN right one. One other bummer: they didn't announce that Destiny 2 would be 60fps on console. And those on the show floor are confirming that it's not:

Because grimoire cards were a bandaid solution to having to rewrite the game's plot a year from release, and it'd be nice to see something more comprehensive built into the game in the sequel. Anything that takes you out of the game to explain the game is ... not ideal.

I'll be honest, Alex. I'm red hot keen to see what Bungie have for us, but not 3am keen. But I'm glad you're doing a live blog - it's usually much easier to read at work than trying to squeeze-in video footage at my desk.

The problem for me is that if its more of Destiny 1 it will leave me feeling like it was not worth my money. I had maybe four hours of what I would class as "good" game time across vanilla all the way up to Taken. I had plenty of hours, but for the most part it wasn't really enjoyable, I was just playing with mates.

If it's more of D1 without the limitations that prior gen provided (limited 'open world', poor character interactions, poor game-finding) then I think the consumers will be pleasantly surprised.

I loved Destiny 1, got roughly 800 hours out of it total. I wasn't a fan of how little content the first 3 DLC's had however.

If anything it's a sequel for the current players of Destiny 1. If ya didn't like the feel of the second from the 2 minutes worth of trailers we've had now, then your mind is practically made up, isn't it?

Part of the reasoning, I think, was to ensure it was easier for people to complete all of the game content. It's hard to get six mates together sometimes, and you couldn't do raids etc. without a full party. And rather than splitting up player counts and groups, Bungie went for parity across all modes.

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